


And then we'll make the rules

by Runespoor



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Families of Choice, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1805641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakura’s parents run a foster home. Guess which kids they take in. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Nields’ “This Town is Wrong”.

n the beginning, Sakura thought she'd miss Hinata for more reasons than her self; Hinata was quiet, and nice, and a girl. She didn't mind sharing her parents with Hinata, after they managed to coax Hinata into behaving as more of a child and less as a terrified, well-trained guest. 

Hinata once told her in confidence - and Sakura knew how highly Hinata valued secrets, and would rather let herself be dismembered, would rather let Ino ignore her for weeks, than betray her - that she tried to think of herself as a mouse, and it helped. 

When Hinata left, she hardly ever did her impersonation of a mouse, though she was still one of the quietest kids Sakura ever knew.

The boys who came-- well. The first problem was right there in the noun. Not-girls, and also, there were two. Sakura was afraid for her dolls, and they were going to smell and take her things and it was going to be utterly _horrid_. They would play soccer on her parents' lawn and they were going to break windows. 

They would _pull her hair_ , she pointed out to her parents in desperation, but they didn't listen.

The first few days, Sakura kept her hair up, messy buns that it took her too long to do for how ugly they were, but she didn't want to make the hair-pulling any easier on them.

She needn't have worried; they never pulled her hair. 

Naruto might have tried, but Naruto was too busy trying to get reactions out of Sasuke, and Sasuke was too busy being the sole survivor of a family of four. Whispers Sakura found here and there said it was something horrible, but she tried not to listen. Last month the whispers had been saying that the reason her hair was pink was because her parents had let her eat too much cotton-candy when she was little. 

Soon Sakura was too busy with them - keeping them grounded and covering for them when they'd got into a spat at school, sneaking Naruto her schoolwork and helping Sasuke remember the title of a beloved children's book, taking their toys for hostage and threatening them bodily to force them to _see her_ \- to pay attention to much of anything.

In the end she missed Hinata, because Hinata would never have made Sakura choose between her parents and running away to protect Sasuke.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This happened when edenfalling wanted to know why Sasuke would run away and what he would need protecting from.

"He _left_ , Naruto, he just left!" Sakura half-shouts, half-whispers into her cell. "He put sleeping pills in my tea, put me on my bed, and he _left_!"

Swerving around in her pacing, she cuts to the window, though Naruto told her he’s still in the bus, ten minutes away. The glass is cold against her hand, pleasantly cool when she rests her forehead against it. She forces herself to breathe out, slow and deep, like she does when she goes running. Last thing she wants is face her parents right now, and if there’s screaming coming from her room when the boys are outside, her mom will definitely come knocking. 

On the other end of the line, Naruto is babbling, hurt incomprehension and rapid plunging forward. He never worried Sasuke would leave.

“God, I was so _stupid_ ,” Sakura mumbles against the window. “I thought if we talked it over it might help. Like he’d _listen_.” 

Naruto makes a noise of soul-deep understanding; it comforts her, for a heartbeat before she feels cold and alone again, Naruto and her bumping against the walls of Sasuke’s sorrow. 

Then she’s angry again, because it’s one thing that he never listens, and it’s another that he flings back in her face that they’re trying to support him, however he needs them to. 

“I _made him tea_ ,” she says furiously. “I made us tea so we’d sit in my parents’ kitchen and have a heart-to-heart like sensible people, and he used the opportunity to _put sleeping pills in my fucking drink_!”

Is that a gasp? Did Naruto just gasp? Yes, she doesn’t usually swear. Not out loud; she does her swearing, sentences-long strings of it, deep in the corner of her mind where she fantasies about punching people and screaming until they stop dismissing her. 

“ _Motherfucker_ ,” she breathes, viciously, and it’s a bit of relief to say it, for once.

This time it’s a gleeful chortle that’s stifled from Naruto’s end, and he starts talking again, but at least this time it’s about practical stuff, instead of protests that Sasuke would never do that. Maybe it’s a good thing they’re having this conversation on the phone; Sakura’s not sure she could’ve refrained from hitting him otherwise. No, it’s more likely she would’ve cried, that if she’d seen his face on top of hearing his voice, she couldn’t have turned the heartrending burn into burning anger.

“Try to pack our stuff,” Naruto tells her. “Take the backpacks we use for camping, and take what we really need. I’m here in—I can be home in five, but we need to hurry if we want to get him before he’s at—you sure he’s gone for that Orochimaru guy?”

“Yeah,” Sakura answers grimly, as she throws open the door to her closet and catches the backpack, folded at the top of the closet with a pair of new boots Sakura bought on sale, in anticipation of high school and the winter to come. “And we’ve _got_ to get him before Orochimaru, Naruto, we _have to_. That _creep_ was all over him, and Sasuke--”

Naruto wasn’t there, the first time Sasuke and Orochimaru had ran into one another. Sakura had been, though, and she’d instantly recoiled at the older man’s too smooth politeness, and the morbid interest he seemed to take in Sasuke. _Obscene_ was the word that had come to Sakura’s mind, though there had been nothing overt. Nothing she could’ve talked to the police or anyone else about.

“Sasuke just cares what Orochimaru can tell him about his family,” Naruto finishes. “Got it. Oh, hey, did he take his stash? He keeps it in the second drawer of his desk, it’s like he doesn’t know if he wants to hide it, I’m not even sure he knows I know,” he muses, “did you check it?”

Sakura blinks, puts back the shirt she was hastily folding onto the bed. “I… didn’t. Know. I’ll check. Say,” she adds in inspiration, “you should tell me what we should take. You’ve got more experience at this stuff than I do; I can think of the money, but what else do we need?”

It’s the first time she lets it out that she knows of Naruto’s history. Before he came—to live with Sakura’s family, before it became home, he’d already been through several foster families. Sakura never knew how many, and she never tried to find out, but she knows he used to run away. Once, he stayed out for three weeks before CPS caught up with him again. 

That was the last time; after that, they sent him here. Sakura didn’t know it at the time, but the children her parents took in were often problem kids. Sometimes it was obvious, like with Naruto, kids who’d been dealt a rotten life and who were fighting back the world, and other times it was more subtle; wrong in a way that a child would identify, like Hinata’s unnatural quiet, but not recognize as the sign of _problems_.

There’s a breath of silence, then Naruto snorts. “Oh yeah, baby, I’ve got _expertise_.”

“So, tell me.”

“Nah,” he says in a distracted tone, “bus’ pulling up, I’m here in two, I’ll do it m’self it’ll be quicker - see if that jerk’s taken his money see ya!”

And he hangs up abruptly. Must be running here, to pack the bags Sakura has no idea how to put together. She throws a look around her room, the bunny plushie she’s had since she was two months old, the framed photograph of Ino and her taken for her sixth birthday, which Ino gave her on her thirteenth when they were friends again, the nail polish she’s taken to wear this year at school. 

Before she goes to the boys’ room, on a whim she grabs the new boots, that made her legs look so great at the store and make her feel so bad-ass, and puts them on top of her empty backpack. 

She’ll want these in her future.


End file.
